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By Matthew L. WaldTHE NEW YORK TIMES • Monday March 31, 2014 8:12 AM

WASHINGTON — Federal safety regulators decided not to initiate a formal investigation of
problems with the ignition switches of Chevrolet Cobalts and other cars even after an investigative
group reported that it knew about 29 complaints, four fatal crashes and 14 field reports that
showed the problem was preventing air bags from deploying, according to a memo released by House
investigators yesterday.

A House subcommittee will open hearings on Tuesday to look into why government investigators
never realized that there was a generic problem with the ignition systems of the Cobalt and other
vehicles that could switch off if the key was bumped, shutting the engine and disabling the air
bags.

The findings about the complaints and crashes appeared in a PowerPoint presentation dated Nov.
17, 2007, found among the 6,000 pages of documents submitted by the National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration in answer to a request by the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

But officials at the safety agency’s Office of Defects Investigation, to whom the presentation
was given, told committee staff investigators that “the panel did not identify any discernible
trend and decided not to pursue a more formal investigation.”

The committee also revealed yesterday that Delphi, the supplier that made the ignition switch,
told General Motors in February 2002, before the first vehicle to use the switch had even hit the
road, that the part did not meet General Motors’ specifications.

The hearing will be held by the Oversight and Investigations subcommittee.

Yesterday, the committee chairman, Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., said in a statement, “The problems
persisted over a decade, the red flags were many, and yet those responsible failed to connect the
dots.”

The subcommittee chairman, Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Pa., said in a statement that GM and the safety
agency have produced 235,000 documents in response to extensive requests from the committee, and
that “although we have had the documents for less than a week, they paint an unsettling
picture."

Mary Barra, GM’s chief executive, and David Friedman, the acting administrator of the agency,
are scheduled to testify.

The committee leadership is particularly interested because Upton is an author of a 2000 law,
the TREAD Act, that was supposed to improve the government’s ability to spot defects that caused
deaths. In that case, it was faulty Firestone tires on slightly top-heavy Ford Explorer SUVs that
made the vehicles prone to roll over. Scores of people died before any trend was recognized.

In the Cobalt case, the committee report said that GM knew it had a problem with the ignition
switches — now linked to at least 13 deaths — even before the debut of the first model with the
switch.

The problem is mostly linked to the Chevy Cobalt, and Cobalts in model years 2005 to 2007 have
been recalled. But it also was used in the Saturn Ion. According to the committee, “a
pre-production report for the MY 2003 Saturn Ion identified issues with the ignition switch,”
including “low detent plunger force” — in other words, a spring that was not strong enough to hold
the ignition in “run” position.